“You’re the one who grasps causality, aren’t you? Can’t you find where the Library is?”
The Yin-Yang Heavenly Seal shook slightly.
“I can only perceive the cause and effect of the Nine Provinces and its people. I can’t see the causality of this world.”
The language of this world was easy enough to master. For someone like Jiang Li, who had reached the Mahayana Stage, and for a sentient Immortal Artifact, communication wasn’t difficult. But knowing how to speak didn’t help—they were simply ignored by everyone around them.
Jiang Li blocked a passerby and tried to ask a question. The pedestrian neither frowned nor showed surprise. He simply walked around Jiang Li and didn’t even glance at him.
Jiang Li forcibly grabbed the man’s arm; yet even though his body remained still, his legs continued their walking motions, and it was as if Jiang Li wasn’t there at all. Answering Jiang Li’s questions was not part of that man’s duty.
Jiang Li thought of finding the police, but in a world with no crime, there were no police either.
“You’re an Immortal Artifact, aren’t you? Think of something,” Jiang Li said.
“You’re the Human Emperor, aren’t you? Why don’t you think of something?” the Yin-Yang Heavenly Seal retorted.
The two faced each other, both at a loss. They looked around at the people—soulless, emotionless, neither afraid nor hopeful, just endlessly fulfilling their assigned roles—and could only sigh inwardly.
“If you two are free,” a voice full of warmth and feeling rang out near them, “why don’t you come have a chat with me?”
The sudden sound of emotion was like the music of the heavens. One man and one seal turned toward it and saw a smiling middle-aged man standing by the roadside, waving at them. Jiang Li had already noticed him with his Divine Sense earlier, but he hadn’t realized that this man possessed genuine emotions.
“And who might you be?” the Yin-Yang Heavenly Seal asked.
Although this person’s emotional presence was unusual and aroused its curiosity, it didn’t feel any sense of danger. The Heavenly Seal didn’t believe this world held anything capable of threatening it. Jiang Li, on the other hand, remained cautious.
He had many conjectures regarding the Dao Ancestor—one of them being that the Dao Ancestor had been imprisoned here. And if this world was capable of imprisoning a Dao Ancestor, then it was worth treading carefully.
“First time meeting, honored outsiders,” the man said, smiling even more warmly.
“You can call me President No.506. Of course, I also gave myself a real name—Ming Zhong. I prefer it when people call me that.”
“I’m the Yin-Yang Heavenly Seal—call me the Heavenly Seal,” the artifact introduced itself.
“Jiang Li,” said Jiang Li after a pause.
“You seem to know where we came from?”
This world teemed with electromagnetic waves; their ‘light brains’ were not handheld devices but existed within those waves. Each person could summon their own light brain in the air at any time. Ming Zhong tapped at the air lightly, and a light screen appeared before them.
On the screen played a recording: the Yin-Yang Heavenly Seal appearing out of thin air, weeping constantly in the sky for five days straight, followed by Jiang Li descending from nowhere. Both of them fell into the city streets below. Jiang Li understood immediately.
The surveillance of this world was omnipresent.
“Where exactly did you two come from? Some other planet?”
Ming Zhong asked, eyes aglow with interest. In truth, both the Nine Provinces and the Emotionless World belonged to great continental worlds, which did have planets orbiting them. But those planets contained neither Spiritual Qi nor breathable air, and their environments were terribly harsh—temperature differences between day and night reaching thousands of degrees—rendering them uninhabitable.
It was not like the Star Realm, where several planets still had tolerable conditions. The world Jiang Li and the Heavenly Seal came from had no such habitable planet at all. Ming Zhong clearly didn’t know this.
To him, although they hadn’t detected life on other planets so far, there was no reason to assume life couldn’t exist somewhere beyond their instruments’ reach. For example, the carbon-based lifeform standing before him—and the mysterious mechanical being whose structure he couldn’t comprehend at all.
“Why don’t you start by introducing your world to us,” Jiang Li said, “then we’ll tell you about ours.”
Ming Zhong led the two to a restaurant. Considering that the standardized nutrient meals of his world might not suit these guests, he personally entered the kitchen and cooked two dishes—unfortunately, even worse tasting than nutrient meals. To the Yin-Yang Heavenly Seal, he served a plate full of nuclear batteries, leaving the artifact utterly dumbfounded.
Jiang Li, out of courtesy, tasted a small bite of the food and silently thanked the heavens that he had long since stopped needing mortal sustenance.
“As I said earlier,” Ming Zhong began sincerely, “I am President No.506—the five hundred and sixth president of our federation. For us, the career path of every person is determined before birth, according to their genetic code. Everyone’s name combines their profession and a number for differentiation.”
“I’m an exception. I thought ‘President No.506’ didn’t sound pleasant, so I gave myself the name Ming Zhong.”
“Why would your people erase their emotions?”
Jiang Li asked.
“Because,” said Ming Zhong gravely, “we want to live.”
“Does having emotions mean you can’t live?”
The Yin-Yang Heavenly Seal found the reasoning absurd.
“All living beings in the Nine Provinces have emotions, and no one dies from merely feeling.”
“I noticed,” Ming Zhong continued, “that the two of you only hovered above the human territories in the sky—you didn’t cross to the other side.”
“The other side of the continent isn’t human territory?”
Jiang Li asked. Ming Zhong called up the light screen again. This time, hundreds of monstrous creatures filled it—some with tiger heads and deer bodies, some like rhinos with eight eyes, others immense serpents wrapped in lightning.
“These are what we call ferocious beasts,” he said.
“Right now, they control more than half the continent. Humanity occupies less than half—and our territory continues shrinking.”
“In the beginning, these beasts weren’t too strong. Our guided missiles could still deal with them. We thought that if technology advanced just another step, if our weapons grew even more powerful, we’d soon conquer them.”
“We were too optimistic. Our technology did improve, but the ferocious beasts evolved faster than we could imagine! In the end, we fired thousands of nuclear bombs, yet they still stood firm!”
Jiang Li thought to himself that these were probably this world’s equivalents to demon beasts—creatures capable of cultivation-like evolution—and their growth speed was indeed astonishing.
“At this rate, humanity will sooner or later be devoured completely,” said Ming Zhong.
“We reasoned that technological progress must follow the principle of accumulation before eruption—you can’t just rush for quick results. So we came up with a plan to let several generations live without emotions, focusing their entire potential on accumulation. Then, after enough generations, one generation would once again regain emotions, inheriting the foundations left behind—using creativity born of feeling: art, film, literature, all those which provide inspiration beyond science alone. Because science cannot progress relying only on itself; inspiration from entertainment and culture is vital.”
“In the Era of Accumulation, we appoint an emotional president. In the Era of Eruption, we choose an emotionless president.”
“Under this system, our technology truly surged forward. We developed mecha suits, light brains, artificial sun warheads, annihilation cannons, and more.”
“As you can see,” Ming Zhong said, a flicker of pride lighting his eyes before it faded into helplessness, “we are currently in the Era of Accumulation.”
His voice softened, nearly breaking.
“Yet even with our utmost efforts, we cannot keep pace with the beasts’ evolution. Every year, our defensive lines fall further back.”
He choked slightly.
“Their evolution is simply too fast.”
“In truth, everyone knows that if things continue like this, humanity will perish. But if we don’t do this, the end will only come faster.”
Then, in a voice filled with sorrow and desperation, he asked, “Can you… save us?”
“Why not just leave this continent? Migrate to other planets?”
Jiang Li inquired. Given their technological advancement, interplanetary migration should’ve been possible. High temperature differentials, kilometer-high storms—none of those should stop them.
Ming Zhong froze, staring dumbly. Then he countered in astonishment, “You don’t know? The farther one moves from the continent, the stronger the gravity becomes.
How could anyone possibly fly out?” At that, Jiang Li stood up and walked out of the restaurant. He leapt into the sky.
Earlier, he and the Yin-Yang Heavenly Seal had only flown low, too low to sense anything. Now, rising higher, he felt it clearly—the higher he went, the heavier the gravity pressed. At its strongest, even a Tribulation Transcendence Stage cultivator could not withstand it with the body alone.
Only after he broke through ten million meters in altitude did that oppressive gravity suddenly vanish.
“So it truly isn’t easy to fly out,” Jiang Li murmured, landing lightly back on the ground.
Ming Zhong stood there, eyes wide in utter disbelief.
(The End of the Chapter)